nickroz

Built in 2013; used for side visualization projects for a few years. Stripping out the hard drives for my server, so it just ships with a single 128GB SSD with a clean Win10 Pro install. Case: Lian Li PC-V750A MB: MSI Big Bang XPOWER II (XL-ATX form factor) CPU: Intel i7-3930k (LGA2011) Liquid Cooling: Zalman LQ-320 RAM: 64GB (8x8GB) Corsair CMZ32GX3M4A1866C9 SSD: 128GB OCZ Vertex 4 - VTX4-25SAT3-128G Blu-Ray Burner: LG BH14NS40 GPU: EVGA GTX670 4GB - 04G-P4-2673-RX GPU: PNY 1GB Quadro 600 PSU: Enermax 1200W 80PLUS Platinum - EPM1200EWT Case fans: 3x Noctua NF-P12-1300R, 2x Noctua NF-P14 FLX RT Priced out the components and it's about $2050 if you currently buy everything used. Currently in Miami Beach, FL, but I can ship. Best offer.

In case you never got this setup, turn off VFB (and VFB channel saving) and use the Max buffer to autosave. The strips of render elements will save alongside the RGB pass and Backburner will stitch them all together at the end. Works in Max 2016. VFB doesn't support strips as they continue to overwrite each other, so you're only left with the last rendered strips.

Did you guys lose all of your credits after RenderTitan went down? Our firm had about $2300 in credits that were left over from a project and I'm wondering if there's any way to try to get compensation. Most likely there was a 'no refund' policy, but it doesn't hurt to ask.

I've been running NexentaStor on a home-built box for years after attempting to 'go cheap' and use a 2-bay Synology NAS for production (212J I think). The apps/etc available for the Synology are nice, but the raw speed and backup options I get from my ZFS box are way more beneficial for a production server. I now only use my Synology for a secondary ZFS backup and serving music/etc to the office (non-production stuff). The one thing that you'll notice when running a cheap NAS is the lag when you're working with your project files. Save times are extended and the time it takes for maps to load before a render really add up to a frustrating experience. We would end up downloading projects from the NAS to our local SSDs in order to get work done, which is terrible when there are 5 people working on one project. With a home built box, you have the options to add things like link-aggregated gigabit ports and even Infiniband for not that much money. I managed to build a Xeon system with 16GB of RAM and Infiniband for under $500 (without data drives) and it easily serves 10 machines. If you're just starting out, get the cheap NAS - but look towards the future.

Any chance to update for Max 2012? I downloaded last night and the script runs into a couple of errors, causing it to not open.

You need to set your min and max for the Z map in the render elements dialog.

It's looking better. For the night shot with VraySun, intensity shouldn't matter too much since the height of the sun relative to the ground plane determines the color of the sky. If you're going after the effect in the pictures I attached, you'll need to add a glow/blur to the lighting pass in post. Those were taken at a long shutter speed, so the lights from the building seem to glow into the sky. To add more realism, the next step would be to add floor slabs and change the color/turn off the lights in some units. Then you can add window coverings and plants/chairs to the exterior balconies.

I would make an opacity map for the pixels and apply it to a vraylight material. It's important to do a map since the pixels aren't ON or OFF - there's varying degrees of fade to each, so you could use the different shades of grey to make that effect of motion. I would also apply a glow in post and try to achieve a motion blur for the glow in the direction of the moving graphics.

The façade needs to be brighter. There needs to be an ambient glow from cars on the street, other buildings, street lights, etc. Check out these pics of exterior night shots to get a better idea. I would start with a wide vray plane light at the base of the building with a warm temperature (4500K) and see if you can get that wall-wash effect.

Corian: it's less reflective than granite/marble because it's a plastic, so find a granite material and adjust the reflectivity off of that. For the exposure: I'd have to see your camera settings, but with a real camera shot like that, I would use something like ISO200 f/8 at 1/160.

daytime: the exposure is off, unless you're going for the tonemapped HDR look. If you take a picture in reality - in order to properly expose the interior, the exterior will be overexposed. Both: 1. the material on the wall behind the bed needs work. I would keep the diffuse big if you want that look, but tone down the bump/displace and increase the UVs on the bump/displace map. Right now it looks like a huge piece of tile. I think if you increase the bump UVs it will look more natural, like plaster. 2. The glazing on the window needs a frame or at least cut it into a channel in the granite, so it sticks out more. Check 'reflect on backside' on your glass material - it should be slightly reflecting the ceiling light and it might pickup a reflection from the pool light (like the granite). 3. The bedroom coffer has wood material on the sides and drywall on the bottom. The transition between the two is unrealistic. The living room coffer shows a 1x around the perimeter, which looks good. 4. Add a tree line at the horizon 5. slight z-blur for exterior 6. maybe add a little more gloss to the wood material 7. light noise bump map to wall material

That's odd. The log spit out an error about "Global" material, so I would try to resolve that. You should upgrade to SP5 while you're at it. As far as the SP2 render, you need to comp it with an AO (vraydirt) pass and add some clouds. Depending on the height of the camera, you could put some trees at the bottom to give the viewer a sense of building height. If you don't have good cloud maps, play around with VrayCompTex: http://bambooblader.blogspot.com/2008/08/adding-cloud-into-vraysky.html

The only thing that's standing out is your IRR Map post-proc saturation is 0.2 instead of the default 1.0, but this shouldn't make your building black. It's more likely that your material bitmaps aren't loading properly. Are they on a network drive? Are there any errors in the VrayLog?

My eye is drawn to the fireplace. It looks like it notches back (like a bay window) and the top center piece bumps out, but the perspective makes it looks odd. Maybe exaggerate it a bit so that it's more defined. Also, the contrast between the sheer curtain and the outside is distracting with the warm composition of the scene. The sheer looks too flat for having those drooping lines in it. You may want to tone down the reflections on the wallpaper material as it's mirror-like on the left wall.

I don't see any displacement/fur in your scene, so you'd be safe to leave it at static - but auto works fine. Give us more info - maybe screens of your IRR Map/LC settings. Is the sun located in the bright spot above? Also, I think a row of the balconies towards the bottom has the bottom poly flipped.